


Maze

by tielan



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen, Team, Trope: mind control, mission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 11:02:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21117719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: The Labyrinth of legend was created to house the Minotaur...





	Maze

**Author's Note:**

  * For [debirlfan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/debirlfan/gifts).

> Trope Bingo: [Round Nine](https://tielan.dreamwidth.org/1172262.html) \- Mind Control

Behind the door, a long corridor stretched both ways into endless darkness.

“Left or right?”

It was a rhetorical question. Given they’d all woken up in the dark with only the vaguest recollection of how they’d come to be in this place, John hardly expected any of his team to know which way they should go.

He remembered coming through the Stargate – on foot. The probes had shown the village less than a twenty-minute walk away, with the Ancient-looking ruins a little way away from that, and while Rodney had complained, John had felt like footing it.

Maybe that had been a mistake, given they’d blacked out as soon as they’d passed through the event horizon, and were in some kind of an underground maze that looked almost Genii in its bleak utilitarianism.

“Does it matter?” Rodney demanded, grumpily. “We’re lost in any case!”

“Left.”

John glanced down at Teyla. It was hard to see in the near-absolute darkness of these tunnels – lit only by the lights on their weapons - but she was staring off into the darkness with a glaze-eyed look. The kind she got when she encountered Wraith. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled as he moved into her line of vision to bring her out of whatever trance she was in. “Teyla?”

She blinked, her gaze focusing on him, familiar and steady. “We go left.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yes.”

“Do we want to know how you know that?”

“Most likely not, Rodney.”

John looked to Ronon for a vote, and the big guy shrugged. “Left or right doesn’t matter to me.”

“It will.” Teyla pointed her light down the corridor and started off down the left-hand branch, leaving the others to follow behind.

They did, with a few exchanged glances, but no protests – not even from Rodney.

That didn’t mean they didn’t have questions.

John caught up with her at the next intersection, waiting until she’d paused, her face lifted as though to scent the air in each corridor, and chosen their next turn. “Is it the Wraith?”

“No. At least, I believe it is not.”

“You believe?”

She glanced back at Rodney. “It is not as strong as a Warith.”

“Michael?” John asked, immediately on the alert. Yes, Teyla had kicked him off a ledge in Atlantis, but considering the hybrid male had made a perfect clone of Carson, it was entirely possible that Michael – or his clone - was still wandering around the galaxy. Not that they’d heard anything about galactic domination, or an army of hybrid warrios on the move – that didn’t mean it wasn’t possible.

“No. I do not even think it is sentient.” Shadows shifted, but it was just Teyla brushing back a wisp of hair from her face. “It is more…sensation than consciousness.”

“Helpful.”

“If it’s getting us out of here,” John said, “then I don’t care what Teyla’s spidey sense is sensing.”

“_If_ it’s getting us out of here.”

“She’s doing better than your device.”

“It _seems_ like she’s doing better than the mapping detector,”

Rodney shot Ronon a filthy look, then went back to poking at his device. It had declined to provide its usual mapping capabilities, leaving them wandering around in the dark – both literally and metaphorically.

John played the light of his P-90 across the surface - some kind of hewn rock, although it had been smoothed out. The floors were the same rock and layered with a thin coating of dust, while the ceiling was low - a foot lower and Ronon would have been hunched over as they walked. There were no windows and no lights inside, only the endless darkness.

“Doesn’t look Wraith.”

It didn’t. It looked like somethng much older - something much more brutal.

“It’d take considerable power to carve something out that’s this size.”

“Or a steady supply of slaves,” Ronon growled, his voice echoing down the long corridors, the shadows whispering back at them like the murmurings of a thousand dead.

John knew it was his imagination, a trick of the mind. Darkness and uncertainty and the weight of all that earth above and below them...

He wasn’t claustrophobic - none of them were, not even Rodney. But there was something about this place...

Teyla stopped dead, and John bumped gently into her raised hand. Her head was lifted, arrested by some change in their surroundings. He heard it a moment later - the tippety-tap-tap-tap of something moving, a distant scuttle of something insectoid.

“I don’t even want to know what that is.”

“Don’t think you’re going to get a choice,” Ronon said, his weapon already up. “Noise is getting nearer.”

As his light flickered across the corridor ahead, John squinted into the darkness, wishing they’d had night goggles on them when they were taken. Unfortunately, getting stuck in an underground labyrinth hadn’t been in the plan - hell, staying out after dark hadn’t been in the plan - and so they hadn’t prepped for night work.

Then he got his first glimpse of the creatures.

They flowed like a wave - crab-like, with round, flat bodies and elongated legs. Light slid across their carapaces, a dark, shiny blue - gunmetal, it would be called on Earth.

John opened fire and Ronon followed suit a moment later. The air filled with noise and the heavy ozonic scent of weapons fire. Rodney yelled something, but it was lost in the din.

The crab-creatures were _fast_. They scuttled this way and that, clambering over each other as they dodged the bullets and plunged on. John gave up trying to track them and just shot into the morass of creatures - how many were there? Twenty? Fifty? A handful fell, unable to get out of the way in time, but they mostly kept coming.

Rodney was still yelling something, but John’s mind was full of noise and calculation and the scrabbling shadow of cold panic that lurked behind the calm of crisis mode. The odds weren’t good. There were too many of them and they just kept coming. And sooner or later they’d run out of ammunition and then…

_Teyla wasn’t shooting._

The thought arced across his brain like lightning. A split-second later, the creatures froze.

John lowered his weapon. _What the hell?_

“Sheppard!”

Teyla had sagged where she stood. Rodney had barely caught her - as it was, he staggered with her weight until John steadied them both.

“Teyla!”

She didn’t rouse when he called her name, or when he slapped her cheeks lightly. John didn’t need to look behind to know that Ronon was keeping an eye on the creatures that had been chasing them. He could focus on Teyla for the next few seconds.

“Pulse is steady, she’s breathing fine...”

“She’s heavier than she looks,” Rodney complained. “Can’t we lay her down?”

“I want to out of here,” John said with a grim glance up at the ceiling and walls. “They’re not moving now, but we don’t know how long it’ll last.”

“As long as she’s under,” Ronon said. He sounded very certain and John frowned.

“You know that?”

“She felt something. Maybe these are the something she was sensing.”

It would be like Teyla to have worked out that such a link went both ways. Ever since she’d gone up against that Wraith Queen while pregnant with Torren, she’d started looking at her gift as a weapon and not just a line of defence. Not that John objected, exactly. It made him a bit nervous sometimes, but Teyla was sensible and trustworthy, and if she could get scary...well, she _was_ Teyla. Small and beautiful and intelligent and very easy to underestimate was _exactly_ what she did.

“That’d be some_things_.” Rodney sounded distinctly peevish. “And if we’re going to move, can we hurry up and move? She’s not getting any lighter.”

In the semi-darkness, Ronon’s grin was distinctly audible, “Suck it up.”

“You,” said Rodney with snappish emphasis, “have been hanging around us too long.”

John shook his head at Ronon as he hefted Teyla in his arms. “You can walk and argue.”

“You’re okay carrying her?”

“Yeah.” She wasn’t exactly feather-light, but she wasn’t the burden Rodney had made her out to be, either.

Walking underneath the crab-coated tunnel made the hairs at the back of John’s nape stand up. He felt like they were watching him behind those shiny carapaces, just waiting to jump...

Ronon shot one of them and it glowed briefly blue and exploded.

In John’s arms, Teyla flinched, as though waking up. But when John looked down, her eyes were still closed.

“What’s wrong?”

John studied Teyla’s face for a moment. Beneath closed lids, he could see her eyes moving – a slow sweep from side to side rather than the rapid flickers of REM. “I think she’s linked in with them.”

“So shooting them hurts her, too?”

“Something like that. Let’s just get the hell out of here before whatever she’s done wears off.”

Except, John realised as they started off through the tunnels again, now that Teyla was out of it - for whatever reason - they had no idea which way they should go to get out of here.

“Pick a direction, any direction,” Rodney muttered, echoing his thoughts. “You do realise that we’re pretty much back to square one now that Teyla’s deactivated those things?”

“Deactivated?” John didn’t need to see Ronon’s face to know the big guy was doing that eyebrow thing.

“Made them stand still. Froze them. Whatever it is she’s doing with her old Jedi mind trick.”

“Jedi mind trick?”

“Well, what would you call it?”

A shrug. “Jedi mind trick?”

“I hate it when you do that.”

“I know.” White teeth gleamed in the darkness.

John let them argue it over, concentrating on the corridor ahead of them. After the din they’d made fighting the crab-creatures, the silence had rung in his ears, and the chatter was something to take the weight of the silence away.

Although nothing could take away the oppressive feeling of enclosure.

He paused where corridors diverged, trying to decide which direction, and heard the distant scuttle of the crab-things on the move again.

When he looked back down at Teyla, her lashes were fluttering.

“Teyla?”

“Left,” she murmured Teyla, her voice thin and thready, her eyes still shut. “Second alley to the right if one exists, but left at the end of corridors.”

He took the turn without arguing. “Are you okay?”

“There is a limit to my control of them.” Her lashes lifted slowly, but the gaze beneath them was unfocused. “I believe I am able to walk.”

“You collapsed,” John said by way of explanation as he set her back down on her feet.

“Fainted, actually,” Rodney said. “You’re lucky I caught you.”

“I am.” Teyla sounded sincere enough that Rodney looked smug, although Ronon rolled his eyes.

“The crab-things are coming,” was his observation.

They all automatically glanced back the way they’d come. John hefted his weapon, indicating the corridor forward, and Teyla took the lead again.

This time, the pace she set was considerably faster – closer to a jog than a walk.

“Can you give notice when you’re going to try stopping those crab things next time? Not that we’re complaining,” Rodney added, hastily, as though Teyla might decide that their lives weren’t worth the effort of keeping the creatures away, “just I’d like notice so I can catch you again.”

“I will try to let you know what is happening in my head, Rodney, so you will not be caught out a second time.”

A glance sideways showed Teyla with a faint, fond smile on her lips, and Rodney eyeing the back of her head. He looked at John, eyes wide in question, and John felt his own mouth curve in a brief grin. Behind them, Ronon snorted.

“What are those things anyway?”

“Scavenger constructs.” Teyla didn’t look away from the twists and turns of the passageways, navigating without hesitation. “Built to track movements in the maze.”

“And to deal with anyone who finds themselves in here. I guess I don’t want to know what they eat.”

Rodney made a noise of disbelief. “They’re _scavenger_ constructs, Sheppard. You already know what they eat!”

“I was trying to ignore that.” John was only half-kidding. There were some things it was better not to think about. Flesh-eating bugs was close to the top of his list, right alongside clowns, killer whales, the twitchy-crackly feeling of Wraith energy reanimating his decrepit flesh, and the long haul out of deserts in Afghanistan.

“You said they were built,” Ronon observed as Teyla turned another corner. “Who--?”

He broke off as they stared at the blank wall in front of them: a dead end.

“Teyla?”

John looked at Teyla who was showing no signs of stopping or slowing. She strode straight through the wall like it didn’t exist, vanishing into what looked like solid rock as Rodney yelped in surprise.

John went up to the wall, ran his hand across it. It felt solid…but not solid like stone wall felt solid. He pushed against it and it might have yielded a fraction…

The entire wall vanished. Teyla stood on the other side, her head tilted a little as she looked out at them. “What is wrong?”

“You walked through a wall.” John indicated the space in front of him. So it wasn’t the first time he’d seen Teyla do that – it was still…weird. And more concerning in what it said about this place. “You’re sure there aren’t any Wraith here?”

“I believe I know when there are Wraith around, John.”

John figured now was a good time not to push it.

Besides, they had other concerns. Like the pitter-patter of crab-like noises getting louder, a susurrus of noise that swelled like a building wave.

Teyla glanced behind them, into the darkness, although John couldn’t imagine what she could see. But she broke into a steady jog and after a moment, they all followed.

John kept listening for the sounds of the crab-creatures gaining on them, but it seemed that while they were unable to outpace their pursuers, neither were the creatures catching up on them.

Still it felt like forever.

“Is anyone else...worried...by the fact that there...might not be Wraith here...but so far Teyla’s controlled things...using the power of her mind...fainted...and walked through walls...like they didn’t exist?”

Rodney sounded more than a little breathless. John resolved to make sure that Rodney got some time in physical training in the coming weeks. Yes, he’d nearly died five months back, and yes, he’d been busy, and yes, he was seeing Keller, but if Rodney couldn’t keep up with the team, then none of it would make a difference when they got caught - whether it was flesh-eating crabs, Wraith, or some other Pegasus nasty.

“It doesn’t exactly seem consistent,” John made an attempt to sound neutral. It wasn’t exactly easy at the pace Teyla was setting.

Teyla didn’t glance back as she moved unerringly through the darkness. “I cannot explain it. Only that whatever is here feels a little like Wraith, and yet very much not Wraith. Nor does it feel the way Michael did.”

“Helpful.”

John shot Ronon a glance that was intended to quell the big guy as they turned a corner. Then he skidded to a stop, just behind Teyla.

Above their heads, the cavern arched like a cathedral ceiling, stretching up into untold depths. _Here _the colours and lighting were distinctly Wraith, as were the columns that stretched up into that echoing height, and the sudden damp chill.

John had a sudden flashback of the first Hive ship he’d been on - the one where Sumner had died; where he’d killed the Keeper Queen and awoken the Wraith throughout Pegasus. Not something he needed to remember right now.

“No Wraith?” Ronon demanded.

“I told you I did not feel their presence,” Teyla said shortly. John was relieved to see she’d brought her weapon out and was covering one section of the huge room.

“But you felt _something_.” Rodney had his Beretta out, the muzzle skimming the shadows as he looked for something to shoot.

Then the shadows moved.

“She felt _me_.”

It was an ancient voice, harsh and cracked with age and disuse, and it sifted through the room like sand in a windstorm.

John shuddered as he felt the voice pass _through_ him - resonating in his body like some kind of a pressure wave. He saw Rodney hunch and Ronon’s hands tightened around his gun.

Only Teyla seemed unaffected by whatever that voice had carried in it.

“Who are you?” Her voice was even and calm and encouraging. “Come into the light so you may be seen.”

To John’s eyes it seemed like the shadows coalesced, drawing together into a thin, hunched shape that swayed out into the light. Behind him, he heard Ronon draw in a sharp breath, and Rodney made a choking noise. John didn’t make a sound but he hoped he kept the revulsion from his face as he looked at the features of something that might have once been human but surely wasn’t anymore.

At first glance, it looked like some kind of a rag doll - skinny and patched. Then the mind looked at the patches and realised that the skin was worn through to reveal the muscle beneath - living tissue no longer covered by a dermal layer. The face had worn and wrinkled by turns, the teeth gone, the lips caved in, the nose nearly gone entirely. Eyes had fallen into the hollows of the skull, but life gleamed in them yet - life and a burning light that spoke eloquently of what had kept it alive.

“So you see me.” The voice rustled with a rasp of laughter that jittered in John’s bones as the rag-doll woman swayed. “And yet, I think, your friends would rather not.”

“You are human.”

“No more than you and perhaps rather less - you who look human yet are...not.”

“My people call it the gift.” Teyla said after a moment. “It has been passed through my forebears to me. As it has been passed to you?”

“As it was given to me and your forbears - the Forgotten. Forced upon us until we screamed for mercy. And they had none.”

“But that was generations ago. You cannot still...” Teyla trailed off.

“I am still,” said the woman.

“Do you have a name?” John’s query drew the swaying, hollow gaze from Teyla. Maybe it was just the woman’s creepy appearance, maybe it was the mix of hunger and hatred in her gaze as she looked at his team-mate, but he didn’t trust her one bit. “Colonel John Sheppard of Atlantis.”

“Arella.” Her lips peeled back in what was probably a smile. “Of Nowhere.”

“What’s with the maze? What do you want from us?”

“Freedom.”

“No-one’s holding you prisoner,” Rodney said. “You can walk out of here...” He trailed off, as though it had just occurred to him that she probably couldn’t.

“And that,” she said, “is why I need you.”

“Sheppard...” Rodney hissed, and John followed Rodney’s gaze up to the high arches of the cavern where the crab-creatures could be heard clattering softly across the floor.

“I see them. You know, it’s not much of a request when you’re going to force us to fill it.”

The woman shrugged, but her gaze was on Teyla rather than John. “If I was ever one for politeness, I am no longer. I want you to take me out of here, up to the surface. Death walks close beside me and I would see the sky again before it takes me.”

“And after you see the sky?”

One bony hand gestured. “I do not think I will survive much past the sunlight.”

John had a sudden image of the woman crumbling to dust as the sunlight hit her. It vanished as Teyla turned to look at him in silent question. He shrugged, not entirely comfortable with the idea. But it wasn’t as though they had any choice - not with the crab-creatures hovering in silent threat.

Teyla turned back to Arella. “Do you know the way out of here?”

“Of course.”

Of course it wasn’t as easy as picking her up and leaving. For starters, there was the question of who, exactly, was going to carry her.

John hoped his revulsion didn’t show on his face as he hefted Arella in his arms. The problem was more that she looked...decayed - a living corpse that hadn’t finished rotting yet.

“How did you gain the, uh, following?” He pitched his voice to sound casual and hoped she hadn’t noticed.

“There were nearly a hundred of us,” she said. “‘The Forgotten.’ Experiments all. Old and young, male and female. Some survived. Many did not. But there were many other experiments done. They had started with non-human creatures before they tried with humans...and succeeded...to some degree...”

“You have the Gift,” Teyla said. “And yet I think you have something more. The Gift was ceded to my ancestors many lifetimes ago. If you are one of the taken...”

“Afterwards, my body did not age as it did before.

And when the Wraith came to destroy the work that was being done here - an abomination in the sight of the queens - the remaining ones scattered.”

“All but you,” Teyla murmured.

The passage out had returned to the lightless stone walls and sandy floor mere yards away from the entrance of the Wraith cavern. Now Teyla walked in front with the light, John just behind her, carrying the woman whom time and the universe had forgotten.

He’d been more than a little relieved that the crab-like things didn’t follow after them. Maybe they were under the woman’s control, but they made John’s skin crawl.

“Including me,” her voice echoed as she answered Teyla. “I came back later, after they had gone.”

“Why?” Rodney voiced all the disbelief that John was feeling but didn’t dare say while he was carrying her. “Why would you come back here?”

“I had nowhere else to go.” The words hung in the air, a shivering statement of rasping emptiness. “And I knew this place - it was, at least, familiar. Do you know what it is to be forgotten? To be left behind and abandoned?” The sunken eyes fixed on Rodney, walking a little behind and beside of John. “I do not think you do.”

“You were driven from your people for the Gift?”

“I had no people. And where the others went, I was not welcome.” She closed her eyes and tilted her head back a little, as though she was already feeling the sun on her skin. “And so I returned here. And made...friends.”

“Friends indeed,” Teyla said, managing to sound warm and appreciative of little crab-critters that had been threatening them not so long ago.

John hoped she was faking it better than he could tell, because the idea of her actually thinking that those crab things were _friends._..

The corridors had begun sloping a while back - a slight incline, but noticeable when John was carrying extra weight. The side corridors had stopped as they wound back and forth in what was starting to feel like a switchback trail.

They emerged into a room that looked like some kind of stone-lined cellar, empty and dry, with no scent of mould. Cracked and crumbling wooden boxes lined the walls, and a couple of barrels showed signs of having leaked slowly down each other and across the dirt floor.

Rather than exploring the room, John leaned against a wall. His shoulders were burning; Arella wasn't heavy, but she wasn't light either, and that switchback climb had been gruelling. Besides, Teyla was already exploring the space, her flashlight sweeping across the wood beams of the ceiling before pausing at something in the far corner that that was neither flagstone nor beam support. Ronon stepped out past John and made his way over, staying out of the beam of light so he could still see. "Trapdoor. It's rusted in."

"Wonderful," Rodney exclaimed. "We escape a maze full of insects to die in a tomb, one door away from the surface!"

In John's arms, Arella snorted - a croak of air from ancient lungs. "He is a cheerful one."

"Yeah, we try not to encourage it."

"Do you mind?"

"I think," Teyla interrupted before John could retort, "that shaped charges would be most effective."

Rodney protested, of course. "In a confined space--!"

John didn't quite roll his eyes, but he turned to Ronon. "Can you--?"

Ronon took Arella, his expression carefully neutral. Then he turned and began herding Rodney back towards the tunnel.

"What?"

"We're not staying up here for when they detonate."

"I'm not going back down there first! They might need my help to set everything up!"

Teyla pulled the C4 blocks kept in her flak jacket and held them out to John with a wry smile.

"I think they've got it," Ronon said. "Lead the way."

"Why do _I _have to go down the rabbit hole first?"

Ronon's rumble wasn't distinct enough to hear the words, but the tone needed no translation. And, sure, John was glad it wasn't him leading the way back down into the darkness and whatever crab-creatures might be waiting there, but sometimes Rodney just _grated_ on a person.

Teyla met John's exasperation with a smile as he reached up to position the charges so their force would be correctly and usefully directed. "Rodney is Rodney."

"And ever more shall be so," he muttered, rapping at the steel frame and listening for the sound of the material beyond it to try to determine the best place to direct the blast. "He could have a little faith, at least."

"But then when would he get to complain?"

John huffed a laugh at Teyla's droll comment. "Yeah, there's that."

Positioning the detonator to kick off the charges and setting the timer, John gestured Teyla ahead of him, back down the twists and turns of the tunnel to where Ronon and Rodney were waiting with Arella. It took John a moment to realise what was causing the tension and stiffness in their bodies - around the same time he looked at the cave walls a few yards beyond the three, and wondered why they were so ragged.

A forelimb moved and, with an atavistic shudder, John realised that the walls of the tunnel were covered in the crab creatures that Arella had befriended and was controlling. Grim fear clutched at his belly. Were they even supposed to get out of here alive?

John glanced back at Teyla, and could see the same apprehension in her face as she surveyed the things coating the walls of the tunnel. Her eyes narrowed slightly, but apart from that, she didn't respond to the realisation that they were between a bunch of crabs and an explosion waiting to happen. Instead, she stepped past Ronon to Rodney, handing him something that John couldn't see.

"Everyone braced?" John looked around. "Firing in three...two...one..."

The resultant explosion shook the tunnel, and there was the clattering sound of several of the crab-critters falling to the floor as they lost their grip. A sudden rush of fresh air through the tunnels blew past them, tinged with the scent of chemical explosive and the dust of the sealed cellar.

John waited a few seconds, holding up a hand when Rodney stood up.

"What? Shouldn't we get out of here?"

"Let the air pressure equalize," John said, keeping his voice low so it wouldn't echo through the cave. "Also, we have no intel on what's above this place. If there's someone up there, better that they come rushing into us than we go rushing out to them."

Apart from the air now blowing through the corridor - outside air, tinged with the faintest hint of sunlight and sky - there was no sound of any people, no voices shouting, nobody screaming - nothing. John glanced at Ronon who shrugged.

"Seems clear - fresh air, no sounds."

John looked past Ronon to Teyla, whose expression had taken on that abstract look again. Seeming to feel his gaze on her, she looked up and nodded, which he took as her confirmation that things were clear. He started back up the path, his weapon up and ready, just in case. It wasn't paranoia, just caution. But even caution turned out to be unnecessary. When they reached the cellar, harsh midday sunlight was pouring in the hole in the ceiling where the trapdoor had blown out, and John blinked at the harshness of the light.

"You may wish to cover your eyes or turn your head," John heard Teyla suggesting softly. "The light will be hard if you are accustomed to the dark."

"Thank you."

John moved out into the room, still cautious, listening for some sign of what lay above the surface, for the sound of voices, of people curious to see what had exploded. Even if they weren't close, it didn't mean they couldn't be a few fields away and taking their time to get there.

"Well, I'm sure that's all fine for anyone who happens to have a set of wings handy."

"There's wood," Ronon said. "Build a ladder."

"Do I _look _like a carpenter to you?"

"You look like you've got your hands free." Ronon offered Arella. "You take her and I'll build the ladder."

Rodney snorted. "I'm an astrophysicist; I'm pretty sure I can work out how to build one."

From the way Teyla and Ronon's eyebrows rose, they weren't convinced. Arella just made a noise in the back of her throat.

As it turned out, astrophysicists made lousy ladder builders. It was Teyla's practical skills that ended up forming the basis of the ladder, even if John was doing a lot of the carving and hammering, while Rodney stood around and fiddled with his detector, grumbling about how it was impossible to get a signal while they were beneath the surface of the earth.

Even once they had a ladder together, Rodney was reluctant to set foot on it. The fact that Teyla nimbly climbed up the ladder was apparently no reassurance to him, convinced that the ladder would collapse beneath his weight.

"Not that I'm overweight or anything, just that I've been working out a lot and--"

Ronon made a noise in his throat, and set his foot on the ladder, balancing with Arella still in his arms. "If you're not going, then I will."

"Hey, wait! If you break it with your combined weight, then how are we going to get out?"

"Climb the rope Teyla throws down?"

Rodney frowne.d "But Teyla doesn't have a rope on her...does she?"

"No," Ronon grinned, "But I wouldn't bet against it."

"Rodney, are you going up or not?" Otherwise John was going up. He'd planned to go last, backing up the others should they need it, but if Rodney was going to be stubborn about it...

Rodney clambered up the ladder and out into the sunlight. They heard him call something to Teyla before he stuck his face over the edge. "This hole had better not fall in. Teyla's looking for a rope, but it's all ruins around here--"

"No need for rope," Ronon eyed the ladder for a moment, then without missing a beat, climbed the rungs without a handhold as Rodney scrambled away. The ladder creaked but held, and John climbed the ladder as swiftly as he dared, glimpsing sandy rocks, scrubby brush, and blue sky before he felt the opening giving way and had to scramble over the edge of the hole. Rodney grabbed him and half-dragged him away as a part of the cellar ceiling fell in.

It had been a flagstone floor, once upon a time, but now there was nothing left but low brick walls, easily stepped over. And the line of the cellar floor was collapsing...or exploding outwards--

John stepped backwards as the crab creatures scuttled out of the hole in the floor, their carapaces glittering black in the dusty sunlight. "Hey, what's with the critters--?"

"They also wish the sun," Arella rasped. In the sunlight, the patchy, sloughing layers of her skin were even more grotesque. "We have not seen the sun in...many years."

Looking at her made John feel more than a little twitchy and nauseous. He hoped he was keeping his distaste from his face, because she couldn't help what had happened to her, but he probably had much the same look as Ronon, who was actually holding her - like he'd rather she was anywhere but this close to him.

Distracted, he looked around the place they'd come out. It had been a house with a basement - at least, that was what it looked like to John. The walls had broken down until they were no higher than John's waist in most places, and not much higher than John's knee in others.

As the crab-like insectoids clambered out of the hole in the dozens, John stepped over the low wall into what had probably been the street area.

Beyond the broken-down walls were other structures. It had been a village once, maybe a couple of hundred years ago. Structures took longer to degrade in the desert, short of being bombed into dust, and the Wraith didn't usually bother to destroy empty towns. If they were going to come back in a couple of generations for the next culling, then they had to leave a few humans behind, as well as places for them to survive in, didn't they?

Only this village didn't seem to be anywhere near the Stargate. And yes, some cultures tried to build further away from the Stargate, but the net gain was marginal when the Wraith could come through in Darts and find them in minutes while the humans were on foot and the occasional pack beast.

Teyla looked distracted as she came back down the 'street', pausing at the low wall as Rodney fiddled with the handheld device. "Well, we're going to be seeing a lot more of the sun because my naquadah detector says that the Stargate isn't anywhere nearby. Certainly not within a couple of hours' hike."

"But there is a Stargate on the planet?"

"Naquadah levels suggest so." Rodney glanced up. "Although it might very well be that there's a ZPM somewhere around - that would be the other probable explanation for the concentrated levels of--"

"McKay." Ronon growled. His arms had to be getting tired of holding Arella. "Which direction?"

"That way." Rodney pointed behind him, then swivelled on his heel and squinted into the distance as though he could see the Stargate if he looked hard enough. "Probably in those hills."

"That's more than a couple of hours hike, Rodney." John looked around at the ruins where they were standing, carefully ignoring the creatures that poured out around them, spreading further and further across the ground and cutting off all their avenues of escape - assuming they wanted to escape.

There wasn't much shelter to be had. The scrubby trees and bushes didn't give much by way of shade, and the building with the cellar had been one of the last structures standing. But in some of the walls were tall enough to throw at lest a little shade - enough to give them somewhere to rest if they didn't want to go back down into the cellar. From the look of it, the sun was overhead - either just before or just beyond midday, which meant they still had half a day to go.

"We're not really in a condition to start straight for the Stargate," he decided. "And the heat is only going to make it worse, so we'll stay here in the shade--"

"What shade?"

"Until the sun's lower in the sky, then we'll move out."

"No."

John glanced at Arella, who was glaring at him from Ronon's arms. "There's no point in moving now--"

"We are going to the Stargate now."

He blinked at the words that were almost wheezed out of the woman's chest. "It's not practical--"

Rodney made a sharp, shocked noise and stepped away from the nearest black crab creature. “Hey! It bit me!"

The distinction between one creature and another was rapidly becoming meaningless as the critters crowded closer, the numbers starting to seem terrifyingly endless as they crawled out of the cellar, their dense black carapaces gleaming in the sunlight.

John looked at Arella, who scowled through the skin flaking off her face. If she’d looked horrific underground, she looked utterly grotesque in the sunlight.

And that whole bit about ‘not surviving very long past the daylight’ part? She wasn’t crumbling to dust or anything, just sat there with an expectant look on her face.

"We will go to the gate _now,_" Arella ordered, and the crab creatures clicked and clacked their over the walls, flowing towards them in a threatening wave.

""We won't make it across the desert if we start out now," he said firmly. "We need to recoup and regroup. Work out where we are and if we're going in the wrong direction--"

“We will go now!”

“There’s no point—" John began to protest, then broke off as Arella seemed to faint. In the corner of his eye, he saw Teyla step backwards, her hands coming up to cradle her head—

As he turned towards her, alarmed, a bright white light enveloped them.

When it faded, they were in the Daedelus' transporter deck - just the four of them and Arella, none of the crab-creatures. John took a step towards Teyla, caught her arm as she staggered. She clutched at him, her fingers gripping hard enough to hurt as she dragged herself upright again.

"Colonel Sheppard--"

He half-turned his head, even as Teyla jerked again, her whole body stiffening. He was vaguely aware of someone asking if she was okay, of a gurney trundling over, of Rodney muttering something at Ronon who was holding a still-limp Arella--

There was a shout, and John looked up in time to see Arella spasm, limbs flailing, her head jerking so hard it was a wonder she didn't break her neck. Startled, Ronon nearly dropped her, but managed to get her on the just-arrived gurney. How long she’d stay on it was another matter; she thrashed around as though in some kind of fit.

The medical officer wheeling the gurney instinctively called for Marine assistance, and in seconds Arella was being held down. With a good look at the wreck of her patient, the medical officer recoiled, then caught herself. "What happened to her?"

"The Wraith," Ronon said shortly. "It’s bioengineered, not medical."

"No!" The hoarse voice rasped in the cool air of the hold, carrying even through the noise of the ship and the people moving around. "It is my right!"

"What was done to you was terrible," Teyla murmured, her grip on John easing back - firm, but no longer painful, “but it does not give you the right...”

"Stolen..." Arella rasped, her voice fading. "The sunshine..."

"To steal from someone else does not make what was wrong right," Teyla said softly, and John could barely hear her beneath the babble of the medical and scientific personnel who were clustering around the gurney. He looked at Teyla's face close by his. Her eyelids were half-lowered over her eyes, the lashes trembling slightly as she spoke.

"Teyla?" For a moment, he was terrified of what - or who - he might see when she looked up, but when her lashes lifted, she seemed...normal.

"John. I am fine."

_Yes, but are you _**you**_?_ It wasn't something John could really ask outright. "Fine by whose definition?"

"Mine." She straightened and carefully let go of him. "See?"

He looked at her a moment. "So 'fine' like Major Leonard when we found him on that abandoned planet, eh?"

Teyla stared at him. "John," she said softly, "Major Leonard killed himself while believing himself to be chased by an alien enemy."

Relief flooded him. "Yeah, I know."

Her confusion cleared. "I am still myself, John. She tried to gain control of my mind but she could not.”

“You can’t blame me for checking,” he pointed out. Unspoken between them was the memory of the Wraith in the city during the first attack on Atlantis, the Wraith Queen whose ship had lain beneath the deep-sea station for a thousand years before the expedition had disturbed her.

Her brows drew together and down, but after a moment she nodded.

Around the gurney, the Marines were stepping back - they'd managed to subdue Arella so the medical personnel could deal with her, but the calls weren't sounding good.

"She said she was close to death," Teyla murmured.

"Yeah, but she _also _said she only wanted to see the sky again.” Rodney drew up beside Teyla. “And then she brought all the little crab-insect things up with her and used them to threaten us if we didn’t do what she wanted!”

“At least you weren’t carrying her,” Ronon remarked, glancing over his shoulder as someone called for an IV drip, and the medical officer climbed up on the gurney to begin chest compressions...

“That’s not good.” John dragged a hand through his hair as one of Caldwell’s aides came up, hesitating briefly a few yards out before approaching the team. “Yes, Lieutenant?”

"Colonel Sheppard, Commander Caldwell wanted your report at your first available opportunity, but..." The man hesitated and glanced back at the gurney and the calls being made.

“The Commander is familiar with our customary state when we are in need of rescue,” Teyla said smoothly. “He will understand if we take some time to sort out this matter of our companion.”

“I think it’s sorting itself out,” Ronon murmured.

Over by the gurney, the medical officer paused in her compressions and looked over at John and John’s team. He saw the regret in her gaze even as she called it.

Teyla exhaled, a long, slow breath, like she was letting down her guard. “At least she saw the sunlight.”

“At least we don’t have to deal with her anymore,” Rodney muttered, then stared back at the others. “What? You’re thinking it, too!”

“Yeah, but we’re not saying it.”

“Thinking it doesn’t count,” Ronon remarked.

“Oh, and you’re not glad that you don’t have to carry her anywhere else?”

“I wouldn’t have to anyway. They have wheelchairs.”

John grimaced at the back and forth. “Do you two mind?”

“No.”

“No.”

He glanced at Teyla who was watching them with the kind of exasperation that John was feeling right now. She shrugged, and then went over to speak with the medical officer. John followed behind her, not really caring if Ronon and Rodney followed right now.

The doc had stripped off her gloves so she could enter notes into a tablet that had been locked into place on the end of the gurney. She barely looked up as they approached. “I’m sorry. She went into tachycardia, but then her heart stopped and I don’t think her frame is strong enough to sustain the compression pressure...”

“It’s okay, doc,” John said. “You did what you could.”

She nodded, but her expression was grim. “Times like these it doesn’t feel like enough.”

“I do not think it ever will.” Teyla comforted her. “Thank you for your efforts.”

The doc half-smiled as she took the tablet and gestured for her aides to take the gurney off to the morgue. John had no idea what they’d do with the body and he didn’t much care to ask, either. “So, I guess Caldwell is going to want that report.”

“He would not mind putting it off for an hour, John.”

“He wouldn’t mind _you_ putting it off for an hour. I don’t think I’d get the same leeway.” John murmured as the aide came up.

“Uh, Colonel, so I’ve just updated the Commander with a status report. He’s willing to delay your debriefing by an hour, and I’m to show you and your team to staterooms to you to get cleaned up...”

“Are you saying we smell?”

A faintly impish twist appeared around the younger man’s mouth. “Implying it, maybe, sir.”

John snorted at the touch of humour. “A shower and a change of clothes?”

“I’m pretty sure we can find something in your size. All your sizes, if not your styles.” The aide glanced at Ronon, who shrugged.

“Not the first time I’ve worn a uniform.”

John found himself smiling at the aide’s blink. Ronon was so good at playing the barbarian that it was easy for people to forget that he’d been Satedan military once upon a time. Rodney was looking impatient – doubtless the prospect of clean and clean clothed was making him antsy. And Teyla seemed a little troubled, but when John met her gaze, she nodded.

Arella might not have chosen what happened to her, might not have liked the life that she lived in the tunnels beneath the sunlit surface of the planet, but what she’d made of her opportunity to escape – the darkness, the threats, the attempt to take Teyla over – that was all on her.

John looked to his team. His team. Grubby and dirty and hot and tired, but...here.

Turning back at the aide, John nodded. "Sounds good."


End file.
